02565cam a22002897 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100002300070245017900093260006600272490004200338500001800380520122100398530006101619538007201680538003601752690008401788690007101872690009501943700002202038700002102060710004202081830007702123856003802200856003702238w19552NBER20170817231013.0170817s2013 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aDynarski, Susan M.14aThe Missing Manualh[electronic resource]:bUsing National Student Clearinghouse Data to Track Postsecondary Outcomes /cSusan M. Dynarski, Steven W. Hemelt, Joshua M. Hyman. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2013.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w19552 aOctober 2013.3 aThis paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest in using NSC data. Second, using information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we calculate enrollment coverage rates for NSC data over time, by state, institution type, and demographic student subgroups. We find that coverage is highest among public institutions and lowest (but growing) among for-profit colleges. Across students, enrollment coverage is lower for minorities but similar for males and females. We also explore two potentially less salient sources of non-coverage: suppressed student records due to privacy laws and matching errors due to typographic inaccuracies in student names. To illustrate how this collection of measurement errors may affect estimates of the levels and gaps in postsecondary attendance and persistence, we perform several case-study analyses using administrative transcript data from Michigan public colleges. We close with a discussion of practical issues for program evaluators using NSC data. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aI2 - Education and Research Institutions2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aI21 - Analysis of Education2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aI23 - Higher Education • Research Institutions2Journal of Economic Literature class.1 aHemelt, Steven W.1 aHyman, Joshua M.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w19552.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w1955241uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w19552